Half-Life

Read this one twice.

I fall asleep too late, I know this. 
Somewhere under Chiron, under Aries, I wake.
All that's left is the 
half-life of caffeine and the
unfinished leavings from
yesterday, today, and 
ten years, fading.
I visit Shel Silverstein's
haunting drawings 
in my dreams. 

And the grief strike came like a coiled snake. 
I was about to exit at Sycamore .
I had to clear out the brush and lie down in the dirt.
Making a bed of sorts by the stop sign,
with Herb, the cardboard veteran, on the Sunday shift.